MCX Coming At You: Onsite at Money2020

“We are within a stone’s throw of a pilot,” said Jamie Henry, senior director, payments services, at Walmart.

LAS VEGAS — There was one message that emerged from the MCX panel at the Money2020 conference in Las Vegas and it came across loud and clear: The merchant-focused MCX mobile payments solution is real and pilots will happen soon.

“We are within a stone’s throw of a pilot,” said Jamie Henry, senior director, payments services, at Walmart.

All of that is important because when MCX was announced a year ago there was widespread belief that the participating merchants – including Walmart, CVS, Sears and many other leading national retailers – had no real interest in building out their own mobile payments system, that in fact MCX was designed to wring price concessions out of MasterCard and Visa.

The Tuesday panel – which included Mike Church, a vice president at Darden Restaurants; Jim Macari, who leads innovation at Phillips 66; and Kate Jaspon, corporate treasurer at Dunkin’ Brands – made its point clearly. MCX, they said, is not focused only on the costs of payments.

“Our focus is on bringing forth a new, more balanced payments system,” said Henry.